Recap: Eren, Mikasa, and Armin begin their training as soldiers. In addition, we start to meet their future comrades in the battle against the Titans. However, before they can even begin fighting the Titans, Eren runs into trouble accomplishing even the most basic of tasks required by the army.
Gee’s Thoughts:
Personally, I think the best dark stories, no matter how bleak they are, have a peppering of slice of life and lightness to help balance things out. This episode gives us a much needed breather after the rather intense debut episodes. Taking place a few years after the fall of Rose Wall, our trio has joined the army. We get to meet the rather eclectic cast of recruits with whom Eren will be training along side with, ranging from the brutally honest Jean to the hilariously spacey Sasha. Attack on Titan has a crapload of characters and while it may be clearly obvious that not all of them are going to make it to the end of this story due to the nature of what kind of anime this is, they add much needed brevity to the narrative which has been pretty bleak so far. Watching our characters pushed to the edge 24/7 can be a bit much for some so this was a welcome change of pace, even if the episode itself is pretty light on actual development.
Yes, the cliche of the hero appearing to be really bad at a basic task, only for it to be revealed he was actually so skilled he could barely pass using faulty equipment is a well-worn one, but the combination of Titan’s great soundtrack combined with the general sense of budding camaraderie established between Eren and the others really makes it. Despite reading the manga, I couldn’t help but cheer with the others.
And those last 30 seconds. My word. Sure, I’ve watched the PV about 50 times, but I’m never going to get tired of the satisfying “pttthhhhssst” noise the 3D Gear makes. Combine it with the excellent animation and setup shots and I know I’m going to get excited every single time our heroes use them to zip around the woods.
Marlin’s Thoughts:
Gaaaah I can’t get over how hot Mikasa is now.
Alright, I’ll try to calm myself. This was really a good build up episode, letting us see how our characters have grown in the past few years since we last saw them. Everyone loves a good abusive bootcamp scene, and you’d think this was taken straight from Full Metal Jacket for all the different types of people the drill instructor just tears into. Potato Girl does get some props for just being the ballsiest recruit in military history. The best part by far is when she offers him “half” her stolen potato… yet it clearly can’t be more than a third when you look at it.
Still, I was incredibly disappointed by the end. Having all the problems be blamed on faulty equipment is really weak and just basically made the entire drama pointless. This show is still doing well outside that, and I’m definitely enjoying the hell out of it, but let’s hope they don’t pull something like that ever again. I thought we might see more bootcamp shenanigans but the end of the episode made it seem like they were going to get into the thick of intensive training now.
Gee: In addition, for everyone watching this, I’ve created a character guide for those having trouble remembering the loads and loads of characters this anime is going to introduce. While the anime doesn’t suffer from the sameface and rather poor early artwork that the manga did, I have a feeling it’ll still come in handy.
The Glorio Blog 
The thing that niggled at me about this episode was definitely the equipment malfunction – I think it would have been way more interesting if our hero had actually struggled to master the new skill because he just genuinely wasn’t good at it. The scripting around that also wasn’t the best. It’s not a huge thing, but it did bug me that once he found the equipment to be broken, the army training guy bends down to inspect it and says something like, “I didn’t even know it was possible for it to break.” Dude. It’s a physical, man-made object – how exactly would it be possible for it not to malfunction at some point?
As interesting as it would’ve been to see Eren trying to master the 3D gear, I think it wouldn’t fit well. For a shounen anime, Titan is very different from other series in that it doesn’t try too much to make its characters superficially distinct. All the characters wear the same uniform, has the same weapons, doesn’t have weird hair color, and instead focuses on the plot while developing characters’ personality inside. Something like Eren trying to eventually master the gear not only slows down the plot, but also makes him stand out.
I would also find it cliché that Eren masters it at his real assessment. Yeah, sheer hard work and effort is something, but the way it was handled here felt more believable.
I think you all have a good point honestly. On one hand, I feel like there are probably better ways to go about making Eren struggle rather than just rely on deus ex machina like faulty equipment. On the other, I think deep down, most of us just want to see our heroes hurry up and go kill some Titans, so anything longer than an episode of Eren struggling with the 3D gear would be excessive. Could it have been done better? Definitely. Does it adversely effect the development of the story? Not particularly.
I don’t think it was probably a deus ex machina in the technical sense. Although I believe that it is a lot weaker as a plot device to make him super talented and make the equipment entirely to blame, it seems like there is definite plot reasoning for the equipment to be broken. Artemis was expressing disbelief at the scripting, but I’m pretty sure what the writers were doing was pointing out that it wasn’t a usual place for the 3D to break down through normal wear and tear. Most likely they were indicating that the harness had been intentionally sabotaged.
Haha, having read the manga, I didn’t want to spoil anything, but the theory of somebody tampering with his equipment to purposely make him fail may have some merit. Nothing has yet to confirm it one way or another and it’s mostly fan speculation, but it’s one of the more prominent theories.
That said, for those who are going into this series fresh, I can understand why some would feel it’s a weak plot device. I suppose all we can do is wait and see how things develop.